Taking an MMO Vacation? Come Back Soon!

Did you know over 11.5 million people were subscribed to World of Warcraft before the Ulduar 3.1 patch was released? Imagine how many more players have come back to the game since. It never ceases to amaze me how many people share in our joy playing what has become, apparently, the top massively multi-player online (MMO) game in the world. What is it that attracts so many people for so long?

I'm not really sure myself. I love the atmosphere, the lore, and the friends I've made in-game. No matter what time of the week, month, or year I can always find something to do in Azeroth. In fact, I'm so Azeroth-ed out that I actually think I need an MMO vacation. Of course, I know whenever I get bored or a new patch is released, I always seem to come back.

Has the game ever gone stale for you? Been bored or took a break? What is it that keeps you coming back (or do you just love visiting Wowhead)?

Comments

Comment by GoGoGodzilla

on 2009-04-28T15:02:24-05:00

I take a break every spring when the weather finally turns nice and I go raid the outdoors for a while. I always come back because I enjoy WoW and, specifically, the people I play WoW with. I just can't stay cooped up indoors when the weather is great. But after a long day at work, sometimes you just want to sit back, put your feet up and goof off. So I keep coming back to WoW.

Comment by tessae

on 2009-04-28T15:18:16-05:00

... Being able to kill and equal level elite (level +1 even) without much hassle for 3group quests kinda did it for me for a while. ...

Blizz had to do it ... when a new expansion comes out, no one wants to seriously raid the old instances, so they have to be nerfed into easy leveling character PuG material, or no one will ever see that content again.

Comment by Malecden

on 2009-04-28T16:17:54-05:00

Taking a short hiatus myself...being hacked is fun! :/

Comment by bedlam123

on 2009-04-28T16:26:27-05:00

I'm pretty sure Blizz is spin doctoring the amount of people subscribed

this. if they were doing so well, why put adds on the forums?but seriously though, i get burned out on WoW if i dont have any goals to complete or anything.. i need a challenge or something to keep me hooked

there are reasons, but has any1 else seen the adds for WoW on this site? i mean how stupid to you have to be to advertise your game on a website that is completely devoted to it.

Comment by Hadrial

on 2009-04-28T16:47:35-05:00

iv been taking a break for 2 months now, I dont really feel strong urges to come back, I grace wowhead maybe once a week to check out whats going on, but thats because i used to hit up wowhead everyday for 2 years.

a rather fresh thinking game dev named jonathan blow (creater of Braid, try it, its a breath of fresh air after playing wow) put WoW into a good prespective.

The WoW Drug

He clarified, "I’m not saying bad, I’m saying you can divide them into two categories – some are like foods that are naturally beneficial and can increase your life, but some are like drugs."

Continued Blow, "As game designers, we don’t know how to make food, so we resort to drugs all the time. It shows in the discontent at the state of games – Radosh wanted food, but Halo 3 was just giving him cheap drugs."

"The game industry is chasing bigger player base, and we’re exploiting them in an unethical way," Blow asserted. "We don’t see it as unethical because we refuse to stop and think about the magnitude of what we are doing. You can smoke, have fast food, and play World of Warcraft sometimes – when you talk about these things at a societal level, it becomes a societal problem."

"The thing I want to get at is – I’m not trying to blame players here – what I am saying is, if you’re the CEO of McDonald's, you should not feel good about your job, you should feel ashamed. We don’t have that in the games business -- we don’t have that sense, because we feel like they’re 'just entertainment.' We don’t feel like we can do things we can be ashamed of yet," he added.

Blow believes that according to WoW, the game's rules are its meaning of life. "The meaning of life in WoW is you’re some schmo that doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around pressing a button and killing imaginary monsters," he explained. "It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else."

"You don’t come away from WoW with that in your head, but that comes through subtly and subconsciously," Blow added. "It’s like advertising and brand identity. People identify with their activities – same thing with games, people are products of their origins and their environments. We’re giving them these environments and helping to determine what they’re going to be."

hes right you know, its simple rewards and running the treadmill of the game that keeps people attached to it, simple lore and a gameplay thats so easy anybody can do it.

nothing about WoW is hard or deep, thats how its addictive, and thats why its so bad.

it was fun for sure, but the main catch is you need loads of Time-> (some) money to get the meager rewards of gear.

sorry for the chunk of text, try out braid, theres a demo on the steam site, not trying to pull anybody off WoW, its just healthy to try something differnt and use your mind while you play a game.

Comment by darkwraith007

on 2009-04-28T18:55:10-05:00

@ above:The joy of WoW is twofold. The social benefit and friendships of a guild/friends to hang out with (who actually share similar interests), and the sheer fun in killing other players. PvP is a big reason many people still play, simply because they find it fairly 'hard' and 'deep'. If you don't believe that PvP is hard or deep, I'd like to see your Arena stats. :P

Lets just say I have friends who help me pay for my retail subscription, so that isn't much of an issue. ^_^

As for WoW growing stale, I have to disagree. The addition of DKs added a lot to the already delicate class balance (or attempt at such) that Blizz has been trying to perfect. The problem has been that Blizzard has been making recent Class/Balance changes almost entirely based on the whining of the 'anti-(class)' people. Pallys are one of the reasons I seem to 'take a break' after every nerf and come back about a week or so later (with full rested exp on alts). Exorcism in 3.1 working on players was one of the very few shining moments when I was actually going to really enjoy playing a Paladin again. I hadn't been that excited since they added Crusader Strike to the Ret tree. And this was like that only a RANGED attack. =D

Then they nerfed it a week later. >_>I doubt a ton of Pallys suddenly caused a huge shift in the Arena and PvP brackets. Holy Pallys could finally do something other then heal.

Players seem to have always hated Pallys for their bubble, yet Blizz not only has nerfed them to hell, buffed them in the opening days of the LK expansion, then heavily nerfed them *again*, but on top of all this they've made very specific changes to 'nerf' us in PvP since everyone always cries about 'Plate/Heals/Bubble'.

If pallys had some better utility spells (ranged attack on a short CD without going holy, decent reliable dps that isn't all about burst damage) then we wouldn't even need a bubble at all. I've dueled and PvPed and beaten the hell outta people both with and within any 'bubbles' or 'heals'.

Then again, if you take away a Pallys bubble, then you have to remove Stealth from Rogues, Fear from Warlocks, and so on. Its a part of the class as much as those other skills are a part of their classes. Without Stealth, a Rogue is useless. And since Pallys have poor CC abilities on long CDs and very short duration in PvP, we wouldn't be able to have anything against more then one caster at a time, and even then we wouldn't have anything against them. The other 'melee-only' classes all have abilities specifically to spell-interrupt and counteract casters and ranged attackers. Pallys do not.

Take away the bubble, and give us something that's actually useful. Everyone would benefit.

Comment by Procul

on 2009-04-28T19:01:58-05:00

I haven't played since October 25, 2008. I took a break to focus on school work, etc.I'm going to start up again once summer begins.

Comment by scmucas2001

on 2009-04-28T19:31:30-05:00

I took last summer off and I'm not sure why. Just wasn't home to play the game. I didn't miss it at all, either, until a friend mentioned that WotLK was coming out and it must've planted a seed. I downloaded WoW, BC, bought LK on the second day of release and have been playing again ever since. I, too, enjoy the company of others in the game because honestly it is not that great of a game.

But, it keeps me occupied and out of trouble and I guess that is all that really matters. :)

Comment by blademasterjt

on 2009-04-28T22:55:45-05:00

I usually keep myself from burning out by playing other games, usually with a slower pace or (in some cases) a faster one. Team Fortress 2, Spore, The Sims 2, Saints Row 2, Portal, Fallout 3, even Fable 2 help to kill off the feeling of burning out.

And should I burn out, I just take a day off from the game and I'm fine.

Comment by Valkrysa

on 2009-04-29T03:24:42-05:00

I felt the burnout pretty bad near the end of TBC, having played since release of Vanilla WoW and having run out of things to I ended up quiting for about 2 weeks. Felt refreshed after that and decided permanent quitting wasn't required, just short breaks. Came back and prepared for wrath and have been in Azeroth ever since. Raiding 3 days a week with my guild is always great fun.

Comment by jarkun

on 2009-04-29T05:46:51-05:00

I periodically leave for up 3-12 months at a time then return to see whats going on. I leave is because I run out of content. I love questing, but leveling up an alt gets boring because the low level zones are sooooo empty.

I try to play when there is a major release or update. The number of people playing make it fun for me. I'm casual enough that I can't commit the time to being in a major guild or doing the raiding scene. But after awhile I have trouble finding people that I like to play with.

I wish they didn't charge to move characters between servers. It would make it much easier for casual players to find each other, simply "move" to the server where there are people actually playing in the barrens. By limiting server moves to those willing to pay, its hard to get a decent group together that wants to play.

Comment by Haxzor

on 2009-04-29T05:48:29-05:00

I take a break every spring when I TERRORIZE TOKYO

fix'd

Comment by Arideni

on 2009-04-29T05:48:49-05:00

I don't care about the people online on WoW, I just want to experience the full story of all dungeons and raids in Azeroth.

Gee, thanks!

My wife is pregnant with our first baby and I can't in good conscience play WoW for 3 hours a night when I could be helping with the baby or fixing up the house. . .I need to level up my cooking skills and grind out painting walls and changing diapers. If WoW still exists in a couple of years I might come back. Or not. Who knows? It's been a good run, but real life is about to get a lot more epic than WoW could ever be.

Congratulations! Changing diaper skill is a task to be reckoned with. Tip: Never hover over the baby, boy or girl.

Comment by Haxzor

on 2009-04-29T05:56:15-05:00

So much for an MMO

Comment by spidermannen

on 2009-04-29T16:38:55-05:00

I moved to another part of the country and started a new job just before Wrath and took a break cause of it. I tried it for a bit around december but it never got interesting again. It was good for about 4 years which in it self ofc. is amazing but now it feels like I've left for good...

So as an answer to the question I guess I "just love visiting Wowhead", ;-)

Comment by Echoss

on 2009-05-01T13:36:42-05:00

A while back (a year or so), I quit WoW for a good 4-6 months. I just got bored of leveling my pally. Then I came back, and started leveling characters to 10 or so, then deleting and remaking, then finally my friend made me level my pally, so I did, got it to 80, and got bored, took another break and just recently got back into it.

I don't know what makes me get bored of WoW it's a great game, and that's why I keep coming back.

Comment by Arideni

Comment by Crocostimpy

on 2009-05-01T18:26:03-05:00

I am currently taking my break. In the past I would take a break at or around endgame, as my goals were never related to gear progression so much as environmental progression. Endgame just felt stagnant to me, as endgame was more about repeating content for gear rather than completing then moving on to the next. When it got to the point where it didn't feel like I was going anywhere, I would slow down drastically or take a break.

Patches with open content or an upcoming expansion would bring me back. This last time, I came back for Wrath, leveled to 73 (I think...), and quit. Had no real problems or complaints. Just that the stagnant feeling I had at endgame seemed to cross over into regular leveling.

I am not sure what will bring me back again, but I try to stay interested, read game info and wait for something amazing to happen.

Comment by Alreadytaken

on 2009-05-14T17:39:42-05:00

I've been bored of the game some times. But came back everytime. Not exactly sure why i grew tired of it, but I think its a natural thing, that when you do something constantly you eventually get bored doing it.

What keeps me coming back is probably what you describe; atmosphere, lore, the gamer universe that wow has become.

Comment by Arideni

on 2009-05-16T07:28:30-05:00

I couldn't agree more. I haven't subscribed since February, but the lore is fantastic. I have the Sunwell Trilogy, Ultimate Edition, and really love it. I have yet to venture further into the books, as I seem to get less and less time to read hard copy material, but most definitely recommend the fantasy stories that go along with the great Warcraft universe to readers everywhere.